Bad Dreams I
Let us, for the moment, assume that we can go where we please. Floating through the serene Silvermoon City, we come upon a humble room hidden away somewhere in the grand Elven city. Floating unseen through the window, we find Zul'fan Darkspear the Troll sleeping uneasily. As we watch him quietly, he twists and turns. His body is covered in a fine sheet of sweat. The moon over Silvermoon lights a part of this room. The room is filled with a feral, musky scent. Part of it, yet not all, can be contributed to the large wolf sitting in one of the dark corners of the room. The wolf looks mournfully at the Troll lying on a hard-looking cot. If we were to somehow enter this wolf's head, we would find that it is worried. It doesn't view time as humanoids does. It remembers the hunt before meeting the Troll, it remembers the hunt WITH the Troll. It also remembers a long period where the Troll was missing. One day when this wolf woke up, it wasn't able to smell its friend anywhere. Later, the Troll had returned and they had hunted again. '' ''Until they came to this place. The city known to us as Silvermoon City is a strange place to a Wolf. The air full of arcane magiks emits a particular smell that this particular Wolf doesn't care for. When we float unnoticed out of this Wolfs head again, our attention is turned once more fully to the Troll. He is muttering, and making strange gestures in his sleep. Let us, in our temporary power see what this Troll is dreaming about... Zul'fan had made the decision almost unconciously. He had left in the night, seeking out the place of his nightmares. Inside, he knew, his parents awaited. He approached the Atal'ai guards of the dreaded Zul'Gurub slowly. Walking along the torch-lit path, he laid down his weapons. He was clothed only in a ritual voodoo robe. He saw the guards, and noticed them tense when he approached. In the old Troll tongue, he told them who he was. Why he was there. Grinning wickedly at him, they bound his hands behind his back, blindfolded him and let him into the one place in the world he had hoped forever to avoid. The guards had seemed fascinated with the tribal tattoos covering most of his torso. It was nothing on how the voices he heard after walking for a while between the guards though. It was voices he recognised. Once, these voices had summed up love and devotion to him. The voices, of course, belonged to his parents. They seemed worried (and rightfully so) since most of his tattoos were pleas to the ancient spirit and Loa to aid his fight against the Atal'ai and the one they followed. In the time that followed, Zul'fan was inaugurated in the brotherhood. Every day, he did unspeakable things for these wretched creatures. He wallowed in ancient blood magiks. All the while, he hoped the spirits would forgive him. He had, of course, ulterior motives for being here. He had found out before coming here that his parents were low-ranking voodoo priests in the former city of Zul'Gurub. This was the deciding factor in his coming here. He hoped he would be able to hide his true motives for long enough. He had prayed he would be able to single out his parents, and murder them. Their abominable worship of the Soul Flayer must stop. Months and months passed. Zul'fan had begun despairing, since with every passing day both his chances of getting out of Zul'Gurub again and getting his parents alone seemed to diminish. Somehow, he found the chance in the middle of a spring night. Through fate or fortune, Zul'fan's parents were both stricken ill. Zul'fan hadn't been told why this was, but he suspected a ritual gone awry. Zul'fan was wrong in this, though. The true reason they were ill were that several human assassins had entered Zul'Gurub, and poisoned Atal'ai left and right. He was assigned to take care of them, in their hut. Fortunately for Zul'fan, their hut in the Edge of Madness lay close to one of the edges of Zul'Gurub. Zul'fan thought his parents would survive their illness. This would not do. Finally, he had them alone (and in a state too weak to raise an alarm when his plan would be set in action). Truly, the spirits smiled on Zul'fan. In the hours just before sunrise, Zul'fan took out the ceremonial dagger he had stolen from one of the voodoo priests several months earlier. The moon, pale above Zul'Gurub, was shining directly into the hut. Zul'fan waited until a large dark cloud passed across the moon. He knelt beside the bed where his parents lay ill. He noticed that his father had woken up. In a fever, he was staring at Zul'fan. Suddenly nervous, he knew he'd have to kill him first. He forced his fathers eyes closed, muttering words of assurance. When his fathers eyes were closed, Zul'fan prepared the enormous dagger (which was truthfully closer to being a sword than a dagger). When the blood spattered all over Zul'fan's arms, he closed his eyes. A cracking sound told Zul'fan that he had severed the head of his father from the rest of the body. When he turned to his mother, he placed the dagger against her throat and closed his eyes once more... Floating out of the nightmares of Zul'fan, we stay for a moment above his head. No need to see the last of that dream to know what happened. Slightly unnerved, we notice the bones in the leather necklace around the young Trolls neck. Some of those bones are cut jaggedly in half, at odd broken angles. The shadows pool in over the sleeping body of Zul'fan. We float once more out of the window. Sometimes, people dream of what will happen. Yet sometimes, they also dream of what already has passed... Category:Stories